Archive for the ‘HHS Updates’ Category
The NIMH Annual International Research Conference on the Role of Families in Preventing and Adapting to HIV/AIDS is a three-day conference addressing the importance of family in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Family is defined as a network of mutual commitment. Academic researchers and service providers come together to discuss the most effective approaches to working with families that are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. This year, the conference will be held in Nashville, TN, and the theme will be HIV Prevention and Support for Families Living in Rural Areas. The first day, Community Day, is focused on working with community providers to respond to the social context of HIV risk and enhancing the role of families in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS. Over the course of the next two days, the latest scientific findings from HIV/AIDS family-based studies will be presented in symposia, workshops, and a poster session.
The goal of this initiative is to describe the health and health care trajectories of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and their families, and to evaluate the feasibility of using a large population-based database for research on risk factors for ASD. The most recent prevalence data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that one in 110 children have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), an increase of 57 percent between 2002 and 2006.
Clearly, ASD is a significant public health challenge. ASD is characterized by core social and communication deficits. Additionally, there are numerous reports of co-occurring medical conditions such as gastrointestinal disorders, immune dysfunction, and food sensitivities. However, there is limited scientific evidence on the physical health correlates of ASD, particularly at a general population level. In particular, we know relatively little about the range of health trajectories of people with ASD, both before and after the initial presentation and diagnosis of ASD. Similarly, we know little about pre- and post-diagnosis patterns of health care use over time among people with ASD.
NIMH · Development of a Clinically Useful Classification of Mental Disorders for Global Primary Care. This initiative aims to consider whether correspondence can be created between a clinically useful classification of mental disorders for global primary care and the overarching typologies of mental disorders that have already been described and will continue to emerge from NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project.
Based on clinical utility as an overarching priority, formative field studies will be designed to address three broad goals. Goal 1: How disorder categories should be organized by examining clinicians’ conceptualizations of mental disorders and their clinical management. Goal 2: Which clusters of disorders, conditions, or problems should be included in a diagnostic system to facilitate appropriate identification and treatment of mental and behavioral disorders at each level of care—mental health specialty or primary care. Studies in primary care settings will focus on obtaining the best coverage of high-incidence and high-resource mental health problems, some of which may be most usefully described at the level of problems or symptom clusters rather than by formal diagnoses. Collaboration with NIMH would focus, in part, on relating this work to the domains emerging from the RDoC project. Goal 3: How information for each disorder should be presented, especially to primary care health providers and patients, to maximize clinical utility.
MedicareCard.com News – New Grant Aims: Identify, Reduce Suicide Among Emergency Department Patients
A new NIMH-funded grant aims to increase suicide detection and prevention efforts among patients who present with suicide risk factors in hospital emergency departments. The Emergency Department Safety Assessment and Follow-up Evaluation (EDSAFE) trial will be coordinated by the Emergency Medicine Network (EMNet), which is based at Massachusetts General Hospital. The team of researchers will be led by Edwin D. Boudreaux, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts, Carlos A. Camargo, Jr., M.D., DrPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Ivan Miller, Ph.D., of Butler Hospital in Providence, RI. The project is expected to enroll nearly 1,420 participants over five years.
EDSAFE will be conducted in three phases. The first phase will assess treatment as usual (TAU) for patients. TAU typically consists of evaluating suicidal risk only among those emergency department patients who have psychiatric risk factors such as depression, suicidal thinking or behavior (ideation), or substance abuse. Often these patients are put under observation while at the hospital and are evaluated by a mental health provider. They also may be referred to a mental health professional outside the hospital, but few receive adequate follow-up care after they are discharged. During the second phase, a universal screening process will be tested in which all patients, regardless of whether they exhibit typical risk factors for suicide, will be screened for suicidal ideation. The researchers will compare universal screening with TAU to determine how well each detects suicidal patients.
Overall, only about half of Americans diagnosed with major depression in a given year receive treatment for it, and even fewer—about one fifth—receive treatment consistent with current practice guidelines, according to data from nationally representative surveys supported by NIMH. Among the ethnic/racial groups surveyed, African Americans and Mexican Americans had the lowest rates of use of depression care; all groups reported higher use of past-year psychotherapy vs. medication for depression.
Researchers, for the first time, have pinpointed a genetic hotspot that confers risk for both bipolar disorder and depression. People with either of these mood disorders were significantly more likely to have risk versions of genes at this site than healthy controls. One of the genes, which codes for part of a cell’s machinery that tells genes when to turn on and off, was also found to be over-expressed in the executive hub of bipolar patients’ brains, making it a prime suspect. The results add to mounting evidence that major mental disorders overlap at the molecular level.
Amidst the background hum of electrical signaling generated by neurons in the brain, scientists have found that local groups of neurons, firing in coordination, sometimes create a signal that is mirrored instantaneously and precisely by other groups of neurons across the brain. These transient episodes of coherence across different parts of the brain may be an electrical signature of thought and actions.
To conduct comparative research on the implementation and scale-up of evidence-based mental health interventions in low- and middle-income settings. Mental, neurological, and substance use disorders are common in all regions of the world, affecting every community and age group across all income countries. While 14% of the global burden of disease is attributed to these disorders, most of the people affected – 75% in many low-income countries – do not have access to the treatment they need.
NCDEU is a scientific meeting that focuses on the latest developments in psychopharmacologic clinical trials research and related methodology. Co-sponsored by NIMH and the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP), the meeting brings together over 1200 academic and industry investigators, research pharmacists, and clinicians and provides state-of-the-art workshops, panels, posters, and other special sessions devoted to advancing clinical research. Through its highly successful New Investigator Program, NCDEU emphasizes the development of research careers for those relatively new to the field of clinical research.